In her it was born of pride; in them of humility.
In both cases it brought one precious thing, liberty of spirit; but with them it was more secure.
Michael wrote to her once a week, brisk, businesslike letters in which he told her what her takings were at the Siddons and the preparations he was making for the next production; but Charles Tamerley wrote to her every day.
He told her the gossip of the town, he talked in his charming, cultivated way of the pictures he saw and the books he read.
He was tenderly allusive and playfully erudite.
He philosophized without pedantry.
He told her that he adored her.
They were the most beautiful love-letters Julia had ever received and for the sake of posterity she made up her mind to keep them.
One day perhaps someone would publish them and people would go to the National Portrait Gallery and look at her portrait, the one McEvoy had painted, and sigh when they thought of the sad, romantic love-story of which she had been the heroine.
Charles had been wonderful to her during the first two weeks of her bereavement, she did not know what she would have done without him.
He had always been at her beck and call.
His conversation, by taking her into a different world, had soothed her nerves.
Her soul had been muddied, and in his distinction of spirit she had washed herself clean.
It had rested her wonderfully to wander about the galleries with him and look at pictures.
She had good reason to be grateful to him.
She thought of all the years he had loved her.
He had waited for her now for more than twenty years.
She had not been very kind to him.
It would have given him so much happiness to possess her and really it would not have hurt her.
She wondered why she had resisted him so long.
Perhaps because he was so faithful, because his devotion was so humble, perhaps only because she wanted to preserve in his mind the ideal that he had of her.
It was stupid really and she had been selfish.
It occurred to her with exultation that she could at last reward him for all his tenderness, his patience and his selflessness.
She had not lost the sense of unworthiness which Michael’s great kindness had aroused in her, and she was remorseful still because she had been for so long impatient of him.
The desire for self-sacrifice with which she left England burnt still in her breast with an eager flame.
She felt that Charles was a worthy object for its exercise.
She laughed a little, kindly and compassionately, as she thought of his amazement when he understood what she intended; for a moment he would hardly be able to believe it, and then what rapture, then what ecstasy!
The love that he had held banked up for so many years would burst its sluices like a great torrent and in a flood o’erwhelm her.
Her heart swelled at the thought of his infinite gratitude.
But still he could hardly believe in his good fortune; and when it was all over and she lay in his arms she would nestle up to him and whisper tenderly:
‘Was it worth waiting for?’
‘Like Helen, you make me immortal with a kiss.’
It was wonderful to be able to give so much happiness to a human being.
‘I’ll write to him just before I leave St Malo,’ she decided.
The spring passed into summer, and at the end of July it was time for Julia to go to Paris and see about her clothes.
Michael wanted to open with the new play early in September, and rehearsals were to start in August.
She had brought the play with her to St Malo, intending to study her part, but the circumstances in which she lived had made it impossible.
She had all the leisure she needed, but in that grey, austere and yet snug little town, in the constant company of those two old ladies whose interests were confined to the parish church and their household affairs, though it was a good play, she could take but little interest in it.
‘It’s high time I was getting back,’ she said.
‘It would be hell if I really came to the conclusion that the theatre wasn’t worth the fuss and bother they make about it.’
She said good-bye to her mother and to Aunt Carrie.
They had been very kind to her, but she had an inkling that they would not be sorry when her departure allowed them to return to the life she had interrupted.
They were a little relieved besides to know that now there was no more danger of some eccentricity, such as you must always run the risk of with an actress, which might arouse the unfavourable comment of the ladies of St Malo.
She arrived in Paris in the afternoon, and when she was shown into her suite at the Ritz, she gave a sigh of satisfaction.
It was a treat to get back to luxury.
Three or four people had sent her flowers.
She had a bath and changed.
Charley Deverill, who always made her clothes for her, an old friend, called to take her to dinner in the Bois.
‘I had a wonderful time,’ she told him, ‘and of course it was a grand treat for those old girls to have me there, but I have a feeling that if I’d stayed a day longer I should have been bored.’
To drive up the Champs Elysees on that lovely evening filled her with exhilaration.